Tuesday, October 4th 2016
The hog market is seeing prices it hasn't seen since 2009. Seven years ago, the prices got lower than what they are now, but then experienced a rally. During the week of Dec. 18, 2015, hog slaughter peaked at 2.499 million head. Those numbers were seen as maxing out the packing industry capacity, and now the limit is lower because of a plant closure in South Carolina. Experts are worried we may see something similar to what happened in 1998. Farmers tried to give their hogs away to avoid having the feed costs when the hogs weren't worth much. Slaughter houses were at capacity, going past shackle space.